Have you ever wondered if the winters could get any colder or if you could feel and lonelier? Well if you don’t like cold weather or being alone, then Pluto is defiantly not the place to go to on summer vacation! Before I tell you things that you need to know I’ve gotta get this out of me system…… If your teacher ever asks you, “ Why did the author write this essay?” Tell your teacher that the author just randomly decided that they would write about meteors and Pluto. It’s the truth but, just see what happens to you!
Did you know that Pluto was discovered right here in Arizona? Small world isn’t it! Pluto was discovered by the astronomer, Clyde W. Tombaugh at the observatory in Flagstaff Arizona on February 18, 1930.WE knows that Pluto is so cold that the oxygen and nitrogen on the planet is frozen solid! ON top of that, the planet is only 2/3 the size of our moon. Now researchers are learning more about Pluto because they sent the spacecraft called New Horizons went to outer space in 2006, and it will hopefully will have finished its journey to Pluto by 2015.
If you really want to get technical,, Pluto is 1.31 times 10 to the power of 22 kilograms in diameter. It sounds like a lot but, in reality, it’s only 24% the size of Earth. The clearest picture that we have of Pluto looks like two stars in the sky, one is larger while the other one is small. The larger star is Pluto while the smaller one is its moon charon. You see two little specks in the night sky, one is called Nix and the other is called, Hydra. When New Horizons reaches Pluto in 2015, we will have clear pictures of Pluto. We don’t know if Pluto has rings because it’s too far away to see them if they’re even there. Pluto is reflective on its poles. I was able to find out that the density of Pluto is 2000 kg/m3. There might be methane and ice on its cold surface
Pluto is mostly made of ice and the core of it is made of nickel, alloy and iron. Pluto’s atmostphere has nitrogen and water. Pluto is so small that its gravity can’t hold on to the atmostphere for a very long time. So the atmostphere is constantly being made and lost in space. Pluto can only have an atmostphere when it is close to Neptune. When it’s far away from the Sun, its atmostphere freezes again. That’s just a theory though. Pluto’s surface is mostly dry, rocky ice.
Pluto’s orbit is excruciatingly long. One revolution around the sun for Pluto is about 248 Earth years long. It only takes us one year to go around the Sun. Can you imagine? One day on Pluto is about 143 hours long.
Meteors, Meteorites, and Meteoroids.
Have you ever seen a shooting star? The scientific term for the shooting star is actually a meteor. I personally chose to research meteors because I wanted to know what they were. Meteors are really neat!
Meteors have been passing by Earth for millions and billions of years. Meteor comes from the Greek word meteoron or phenomenon in the sky. Meteoroids break off of comets as they shoot through the sky then they go on the same path as the comet from witch they came. When the Meteor reaches the ground it becomes a meteorite. Some Meteoroids are as small as pebbles while others can end up being as large as a plate. When a small meteor goes in Earth’s atmostphere, it normally discentigrates. Meteorites are fallen Meteoroids.
Meteors look like tiny sparks in the sky. The only ones that you see are about as large as a heavy rock. At certain times of the year, the sparks look like they are headed for a star in the sky.
There are three types of Meteoroids ect… Stony-iron, stony and just iron. Stony meteors are made of cilicon, oxogen and iron. Stony is made of silicon, oxygen and iron. To put it in plain English, a stony meteor is made of minerals or it’s a rock.
Stony-iron meteors come from the inner metallic/rocky parts of planets long gone. Iron meteors are made mostly of metal with a tiny bit of rock here and there. Stony meteors are made of minerals so, they’re pretty much rocks. And iron meteors are made of metal kind of like the core of a planet might be just nothing around that core.
Meteors don’t have atmospheres because they are just moving bits of matter in space. When a meteor reaches Earth’s atmostohere, it will either discentigrate or it will hit Earth’s surface. I actually have a personal story about that because I saw a meteor get discentigrated. It actually exploded. (Believe me it’s just like the special effects on TV!
Meteors don’t really orbit only the comets and maybe asteroids. They’re cold in space but, when they reach Earth’s atmosphere they get excruciatingly hot.
So from now on when you’re around a campfire and you see a spark in the sky just think about what I’ve told you about meteors.
